Photo Blog - Niebrugge Images

We took a drive out the Copper River Highway - it seemed like we were going back about two months in time! 

It appeared a large snow blower had cleared a path through the drifts just wide enough for my truck.  The drifts in some places were 15 feet tall!  It would have been fun to see Child’s Glacier with all this snow, but at this time the road was only cleared to mile 40 something, and you pretty much needed 4 wheel drive to even get that far.  Child’s Glacier was still another 20 miles away.

Yesterday we returned to Seward after a short, but wonderful trip.  It seemed only fitting to post a photo of a group of shorebirds departing the Copper River Delta.

Sea Otter

As wonderful as the birds have been here in Prince William Sound, it is hard to beat an animal as cute as a Sea otter!

Resting shorebirds for as far as the camera can see!  And after flying thousands of miles, who can blame them.  I stopped down the f/18, but it is hard to get much depth of field when using telephotos.  I kind of like the out of focus effect.

Today (Tuesday) there weren’t as many birds as on Monday when I captured this image.  High tide is when the best photography takes place, but today a predator (I believe it was a Merlin) passed over at high tide and cleared the birds out in a hurry.  We did get a nice break from the rain.

Flocks of shorebirds in Cordova,  Alaska.

What a fantastic day!  Wow!  Not just the sheer quantity of birds, but the way they fly together.  It isn’t in perfect unison, but more like a synchronized dance where the entire group can continually vary the size, shape and color of the flock with endless combinations.  I was mesmerized.  Hugh Rose has lead tours here for many years, he says there had to be over a 100,000 birds today - they basically just arrived today.  I was shooting non-stop thinking it couldn’t possible get any better, and that was when I heard the words “O my God! (more…)

Cordova Alaska boat harbor during a stormy, rainy night last night. 

Yesterday we took the Alaska State Ferry from Whittier to Cordova, one of may favorite Alaska towns, to see the amazing shorebird migration.  I have always wanted to see this amazing event, and it currently is a big hole in our Chugach National Forest coverage.  Unfortunately, we have seen lots of rain, and very few birds, but that should change during the next few days… hopefully!

Look at how deep the snow is along Exit Glacier Road!  Hard to believe it is May 3rd.  This is near the Resurrection River bridge and is as far as you can drive right now.  Judging from the snow depth, it may be awhile before you can drive the rest of the way to the glacier.  Now this really isn’t the photo I was going after this morning - I better explain. (more…)

I was wondering around in the boat harbor this evening and found this sailboat rigging kind of interesting.  It seems like there are endless little photo opportunities in a commercial boat harbor.

Resurrection River in the Chugach National Forest, near Seward, Alaska.

Wading across this knee deep river in my ski boots was a chilling reminder that I was no longer in the desert!  But it was so worth it. (more…)

I think I posted this photo on the blog last October the day after I captured it - well this month it is on the cover of Fort Wayne Living!

Well I haven’t subjected you to my shameless self promotion in awhile, but this one is too excited to pass up.  For the second year in a row I have a photo on the cover of The Milepost! 

As I wrote last year, this is a special cover for me, as I remember growing up, every traveler through Glennallen carried a copy of this extremely valuable travel guide.  To this day, I still make sure I have the current Milepost with me as I travel around Alaska and Canada as it has detailed mile by mile descriptions of anything you may encounter - not only the mountains and rivers, but the restaurants and campgrounds as well.  If you are driving to Alaska, you must have the latest copy of The Milepost!

The photo was taken in late September at Tern Lake, part of the Chugach National Forest, about 35 miles out the Seward Highway from Seward.  Wait a second, a quick peak at The Milepost tells me this lake is 37.2 miles from Seward.

Aerial of Seward, Alaska.

Well aside from the one to two feet of snow South-central Alaska received last Saturday, it is great to be home!  I love that drive down the Seward Highway, through the mountains and along the coast - I think I counted five moose on the way home.  I also love the fresh air, it hits you as soon as you step out of the airport terminal.

This photo was captured during summer a couple of years ago.  Here are more Alaska photos.

This plant seems to have many names and uses.  Some call it Thorn-Apple, or Sacred Datura, or even Jimson Weed.  The entire plant is poisonous, but portions of the plant are used in modern pharmaceuticals for things like motion sickness medication and to counteract muscle spasms.  Not surprisingly, Native Americans were also aware of the many medicinal benefits of this plant. 

It is about the only thing blooming in Anza-Borrego right now, this plant will bloom most the summer.  We should be back in Alaska Saturday night, it will be a little while before flowers begin blooming there. (more…)

This photo was on the card in my back-up camera, a camera I didn’t need on this trip.  I do remember taking this photo before leaving on this trip.  This is a snow storm raging outside our front door; you can see the door frame on the edges.  Normally I keep a path shoveled down to the street out front, but the snow was filling it in so fast that I said forget it and took a picture instead. 

Finding this photo kind of reminded me of my film days when a partial roll would get left in a camera after a trip, only to be developed weeks or months later.  It would often be a nice surprise.   

I must admit, after a couple months in the warm desert, this scene looks completely foreign to me right now.  I have often said that during the summer in Alaska, I have trouble even remembering what winter is like, and in the winter, summer seems equally inconceivable.  I remember enough to know I am very excited to be heading back to Alaska  for summer!  Here are more Alaska photos.

Actually this is a jackrabbit, so maybe I should have titled this Silly Wack-wabbit.

Seems like at the end of a trip we start evaluating our travel plans and methods.  Our trips outside Alaska to the Lower 48 have typically been fairly long trips for a couple of reasons. (more…)

These cool elephant looking animals are actually metal sculptures of gomphotherium.  These guys actually used to roam in the Anza-Borrego area 3.7 million yeas ago - the gomphotherium, not the sculptures.  :)  (more…)

Back-lit ocotillo against a shadowed hillside.   These guys were really getting bright red!

A Gila Woodpecker tends to a nest cavity in a Saguaro Cactus - McDowell Mountain Regional Park, Arizona.

Gila Woodpeckers sometimes reuse their nest cavity, but often build a new one.  This seems to be inefficient, but you know what is really cool; their old cavities are used by all kinds of birds and even snakes - animals that aren’t able to dig their own cavity.  It is just one of the millions of little things that constantly amazes me about nature.  Every creature plays a role in our world.

Saturday we returned to Anza Borrego.  Janine has some family business in OC, and I thought this seemed like a good place to spend a few more days before returning back to Alaska.

Owl’s Clover.

This Owl’s Clover really has nothing to do with our web server - we were adjusting a few photos from earlier in the trip for a customer, and I thought it was kinda purdy, so I went with it.

Our main photo website seems to grow in spurts, and lately it has really been spurting.  According to Webalizer, we had over 336,000 visitors last month!  This month is even busier.  I believe Webalizer counts spiders and repeat visitors, so that number is probably a bit overstated , but even if you reduce it by a third, it is still a lot of great activity.

That’s the good news, now the bad.  (more…)

I think cholla cactus look great when back-lit.  I can speak from experience, these things are no fun to remove from an arm!  I now give them a wide berth.